paul ryan, one reason a lot of conservatives were impressed by him is he's always very careful to say i support a safety net. we want to modernize the safety net. that message has gotten drowned out in part because it actually doesn't resonate with a lot of what you hear from conservative activists because they haven't been able to successfully counter the framing coming from the other side. partly because it doesn't seem natural to them. but if you had someone who could make that argument in a more compelling way, someone from a dense, urban, coastal state, maybe we'd see a different result. >> well, i -- i'm curious, you talk about republicans being sort of backed into it, but they're backed into it because the nature of the republican primary electorate. it's not just an accident, right? it's hard to see how you have deliberate strategies when you have a base of the republican party that is the force that is backing someone like mitt romney into probably much more conservative positions on a range of issues than he might normally take. >> i think that's a great and important point,